How My Facebook Post Went Viral and Got Shared 5,000 Times within 24 Hours

Over the past few years I have been experimenting with hundreds of posts on Facebook. Yesterday’s experiment was by far the most successful one as it was shared more than 5,377 times within 24 hours.

The Facebook post which went viral was posted on my Facebook page which I started around 5 years ago called North Borneo Historical Society. This page becomes a repository and digital archives of history related to North Borneo which is now known as Sabah, a state located in Malaysian Borneo.

The tips which I’m about to share below may not work for everyone as there are a lot of other different factors which will determine whether a Facebook post will go viral or otherwise.

How to Create a Viral Facebook Post

Before we begin, the screenshot below shows the anatomy of my Facebook post that had gone viral.

This post is basically a short lesson for people who would like to learn the local dialect spoken in North Borneo with embedded views of North Borneo (Sabah) in 1960–70’s.

Based on my past experience, people will react positively on posts which they can relate to or the ones which are close to their hearts. I was able to observe that language related posts were being shared many times before. This became the basis for me to create the post.

1. Write Short Description of Post

Instead of writing a long description, I wrote a short description to make sure that it’s visible when browsed on mobile phones without users having to tap on ‘more…’. The only challenging part is to write it in both Malay and English.

2. Call to action

There are two different call to action instructions in this post:

a) Asking people to comment by creating short sentences based on the word shown in each photo

b) Asking people to share

3. Multiple Images in a Post

I also noticed that many viral posts on Facebook have multiple images or photos. In this instance I created 10 different images. I wanted to do more but wasn’t able to find the type of images suitable for this post.

4. Localized Content

The post is very localized and targetted to the audience. As I’ve explained earlier, the audience was able to relate to this post immediately.

5. Time of Posting

I posted it just after lunch time in Malaysia.

6. Graphics

It’s always been a challenge for me to create stunning Facebook posts as I’m not really a designer. However, I discovered Canva a few months ago and have been using it to create beautiful images that can be used for Twitter or Facebook. Most of the elements are free to use.

7. Other X-Factors

Other possible factors could be due to the fact that the page has already around 30k+ followers. However, all posts prior to this has never been shared exceeding 1000 times.

After the post had gone viral, I shared it on my own Facebook page and another Facebook group I created which is also related to North Borneo.

It was a fun experience doing this post and my page has got 1,300+ increased in organic Facebook likes for the past 24 hours.

If you think this post is useful, please help Share it on Facebook! Good luck in creating your own viral post!